Opinion

21 Mar 2010 1 Comment

World Pair Go Tournament features 3 Aussies beating other.

Its worth noting that the World Pair Go Cup in Hangzhou officially begins tomorrow, where Australian is represented by Cathy Zhang and Yiming Guo. Its a four round elimination tournament, and the detailed matchups are available here. Ironically, our first match-up happens to be against Joanne Missingham, Brisbane born, and alas, representing Taiwan is the tournament. The match-up should at least be fun to watch. It’ll be broadcasted live today at 11am Australian time on IGS. So if you’ve got Sunday morning spare, log-in, at least one Aussie is guaranteed to win.

by Mile Gu in Life, Opinion, Tournaments, World Championships Tags: , , , ,

04 Mar 2009 1 Comment

University of Queensland Go starts for the semester

For the past few semesters, the Queensland University Gaming Society has met every academic week or so and played go. They also meet at a frenetic pace to play other board, card, and strategy games, but that’s another blog post. The go meetings are usually led by one or two students who hold dual membership with the Brisbane Go Club, which also loans some decent boards and stones to QUGS for the purpose, and usually makes itself visible at UQ’s O Week clubs-and-societies day.

First semester started this week, and so did the go playing for 2009. For a change the group convened in the Science Learning Centre in the Priestley Building, rather than haunting one of the refectories. It was lunchtime, so I dropped in at half past eleven to see whether they’d get five or maybe push the envelope and have six regular players this year.

Well.

First they ran out of boards. Then they ran out of players to teach the newcomers. Then they ran out of tables. I lost count at half-a-dozen games (two of ‘em on the floor), but I’m told by witnesses who stuck out the entire five hours (!) that on the order of twenty people came through and played. Strengths ranged from three dan to (sorry, dude) thirty kyu. I couldn’t persuade any of them to turn up to the Queensland Championships, but you can’t have everything.

A dozen students playing go is small change to one of the large inner-city clubs. But it will be interesting to see where the numbers are next week.

by aguido in Club updates, Events, Opinion Tags: , ,

08 Feb 2009 3 Comments

To the internet!

Whenever I attend an Australian go event I feel a perplexing array of emotions: my own excitement and anticipation at being able to play this wondrous game, revelry in being surrounded by those who share my passion, and hope that I will be able to experience these sensations again. Yet while go events in Australia have been able to report excellent numbers of attendees, there is an issue which overshadows such accomplishments: the ability for everyone possible to be able to enjoy them.

Relatively speaking, there are few active go players in Australia and we need to travel vast distances to attend competitions and tournaments – let alone club meetings. The time, effort, and cost associated with such travel means there are often limited opportunities for interstate players to compete. However, there now exists a technology that enables us to cross these distances effortlessly: the internet. While many players – myself included – do not enjoy playing online, it is something which we need to use in order to bring our go community together.

We need to actively participate online; to have meetings and competitions online. At the very least we need to make them accessible over the internet. More than needing more members, more then needing more funding, we need to get this community active. We cannot leave it to the few to galvanise the many. I would like anyone who can to have a go at playing online, perhaps just one day a week, just to play a game or get in contact with other players in Australia and have matches online. Don’t just wait for someone else to organise a meeting, or to hold a tournament you can get to, reach out yourself and get in contact with other players.

On that note: I will be getting on KGS each Thursday evening from 6 until late to replay games, play games, and have fun.

I hope to see you there.

It will be on Thursday at 6pm EST in the Australia room.

by jason in Issues, Opinion, Other